Definitely a questionable paper.

And the fact that it's not cardiologists or medical/biological/biochemcial professionals reporting it but psychologists. You think maybe these guys want to add a bit of scientific legitimacy to their field of work?

First of all, good luck, and I hope you succeed.

But what makes you think that having played games gives you the talent to be a game designer/programmer? Why is this a desirable profession?

Consider the example of cars (just because it's slashdot). I like cars. I like driving cars and doing some of my own minor repair work. That said, I would absolutely hate to be an automotive engineer. Being an avid driver or mechanic enjoying a particularly well built machine is entirely different from being the person in charge of designing and building a machine.

Or consider the example of popular fictional universes (like Trek or Star Wars). I imagine there are a lot of geeks who could spout any amount of minutiae about various ships, planets, races, etc. in a number of fictional SF worlds. That doesn't mean they would necessarily enjoy creating them from scratch. And even if they did create one, I imagine the soul-sucking mass of nit-picky fandom would quickly rob what little joy was left.

Are you sure you don't actually want to be a game tester? It seems to be more in the line of what you enjoy about games - playing them.

Why would the people revolt? I'd be willing to bet most Chinese citizens think these restrictions are reasonable.

It's one of those "common sense" type ideas in Western nations that everybody wants a democracy and that everybody wants nearly unlimited personal freedom. It's simply not true. Many (maybe most) Chinese people not only approve of some limits on speech and civil liberties but think the government may not be going far enough. Many of my co-workers are Chinese citizens, and they are just as happy to have the government set ridiculous (by Western standards) limits on civil liberties, tell people what an ideal society looks like, and go along happily, as long as there's food on the table, taxes are low (or non-existent), and the occasional corrupt official is put in prison/sentenced to death. So what if the government owns most major businesses and that the low taxes are a result of not giving the people a chance to share in the wealth? The biggest complaints I've heard from them over the last year have been that the US needs to butt out and that food prices have been too high (mainly because the standard of living is going up).

High minded ideals are great for students, but the people living over there (and here, for that matter) are more concerned with being fed, with educating/raising their children, and with getting on without too much trouble.

Wait.....

So, getting a refurbed Blu-Ray player for a higher price point than a brand new upscaling DVD player is "economical?"

And Top Gun looks better on Blu-Ray? I have to call BS on that. The Blu-Ray transfer was none too kind to this movie. They cropped the image for the transfer so a side-by-side comparison will be massively unfair - to Blu-Ray. The original was recorded on film, so the upscaling makes print artifacts more noticeable on the Blu-Ray versus the DVD. Unless you play the same tricks electronics retailers use (like turning the brightness way, way up on the Blu-Ray and way, way down on the standard def DVD), the DVD is not only going to have a comparable image, it actually looks better in many scenes, particularly the fighter jet sequences (where Blu-Ray should theoretically be better).

The only thing that "might" be better is that room shattering bass in the audio, and the Dolby 5.1 transfer they did for the DVD release is as good as it's going to get. You have to play funny audio games with the original source (read distort) to get any more bass out of it, and it doesn't sound any better (and noticeably worse for the transfer).

If you want to convince people to switch formats, go with the latest blockbusters with all the pretty visuals. Otherwise, the original wasn't recorded with enough fidelity to get a better image, and you may actually degrade the image if the film print is old enough (e.g. pre-digital recording). That and the dishonesty factor. The "improvement" you see for old movies on Blu-Ray is often simply the interlaced to progressive conversion that any old cheap $30 upscaling DVD player can achieve (that can still produce bad motion artifacting, no matter what digital format you use).

What does her personal profit have to do with it?

If a new popular book gets published (say a surprise 8th Harry Potter or something), and I print my own version and just give away copies on the street, that's still infringement, even if I don't personally profit (actually, a loss with the printing costs).

It doesn't matter if I've personally profited, the publishing company (and the author and other associated people) have lost money on my infringement.

There are questions about how much the damages should be (certainly lower than what the RIAA is asking for) but IF infringement is proven, then there should be a punishment for it.

Maybe it works differently in some other parts of the world, but that's certainly the way it works on the US and Europe. That's the whole point of having copyright protection in the first place.

Wow, no love for the Futurama reference. Ok.

It'll light up the night sky.

Instead of an "editorial" section, how about a "Bennett Haselton" section.

As I often think, I've just been "Bennett Haselton'd". I don't mind editorials on the front page, but I'd just as soon avoid the poorly conceived, sophomoric op-eds that seem to be his bread and butter.

Not quite. The lawyer still incurs costs. His own staff has to be paid (by the lawyer, of course). There's a lot of paperwork = copying costs, filing costs, etc. And he's theoretically losing other business by doing this, so there's lost opportunity cost

Pro bono means $0 to his client. It doesn't mean he incurs no costs himself. And if he can work a way for somebody else to pay these costs, more power to him.

Um....that's by the government. Ain't nothin' in the Constitution about a private enterprise having to do anything, save barring it from discriminating on the basis of color, sex, religion, etc. A church doesn't have to allow you access to speak. Your employer can deny you the right to bear arms.

That said, if any of the ISPs have common carrier status, they should lose it for these shenanigans.

You've been ... Bennett Hasselton'd

=)

Will all the non-carbon based life-forms please speak up?

A Mister Non-Carbon Based Life-Form has died in my native Nigeria leaving behind the SUM of $80 MILLION US.

I would like to speak to you to OFFER a subsantial return for use of your name.

This completely ignores human interaction.

Believe it or not, there are several high tech industries (not necessarily computer related) where daily human interaction is not only expected but beneficial to the end product.

Believe it or not, telephones and video conferencing are an inadequate substitute for live human interaction. Video conferencing is accepted as a substitute when live meetings are not an option (e.g. communication between parties in different cities).

It's not a luddite position to believe that we can't completely replicate all the nuances of a workplace remotely.

What about the time wasted in traffic? That time definitely has value.

On a train, I could enjoy a nice book or simply rest, versus estimating how high my blood pressure is rising.

In Houston, it's not unusual to have multiple people in a company drive 40+ miles one-way from their homes. After gas prices spiked (and even now), people are clamoring for more public transit, and it's slow in coming.

The one example we have is a light rail system covering only a few miles in central Houston. Ridership is beyond the original estimates, and people are certainly finding it cheaper to drive part way and switch to public transit. It's ridiculously cheaper to do so than attempt to pay hundreds of dollars in additional gas and parking fees in already crowded Downtown or in the Medical Center. Beyond that, paid parking is not always guaranteed and finding a spot can be impossible at the wrong times of day.

Add to that the fact that our highways are congested enough that a single accident (or several accidents spread across town) can result in major delays, and you get the simple fact that a guaranteed train line saves the economy money in the grand scheme of things.

This isn't true just in Houston. Dallas would shut down if their light rail were to suddenly stop. They no longer have the highway capacity to handle the additional commuters. And when gas prices spiked last summer, their system was at its limit during rush hour. It's certainly cheaper for them to pay for the fares than for parking fees downtown, even with relatively low gas prices.

Sure, and that's precisely the point - there's no testing.

I can shoot off all sorts of hypotheticals about why it won't work, just like other folks can shoot off other hypotheticals about why it will work. That's the point I was making, albeit poorly. Until there's more hard science, extrapolating trends is a non-starter.

50 years ago, personal comm devices weren't even on the horizon and the next "big" thing was space colonization. We haven't colonized space, but we have more information processing ability than ever before. I'd rather set up the infrastructure to take advantage of the technology that *does* develop, rather than the ones we *think* or *prefer* would happen.